Kevin Nolan aggrieved by 'poor decision' from referee during Port Vale stalemate
Kevin Nolan felt Cobblers were hard done to when Sam Hoskins was penalised for handball in the first half of Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Port Vale.
Only nine minutes were on the clock when the ball hit Hoskins from point-blank range before he took a touch and fired towards goal, with the loose ball eventually smuggled into the net after goalkeeper Joe Gauci spilled the initial effort. Referee Matin Woods had already blown his whistle, however, having adjudged that Hoskins controlled with his hands.
"I thought the decision for Sam's shot was a poor one,” bemoaned Nolan afterwards. “He took the shot and we followed it in but the referee pulled him up. There's not much you can do to get out of the way there when you're a yard away. I'm led to believe that if it comes off your arm and then there's a shot, it's a free-kick, but I will be asking about that during the week.”
Faced with in-form opponents on a wet and wild autumnal afternoon, Nolan saw Saturday’s game as a test of his players’ mentality, especially on the back of their last away game when they were poor in defeat at Wycombe.
He added: "You never know what you're going to get and sometimes they might not be feeling right or whatever and Saturday was a big one for me because we had Wycombe – was that a blip or was that something which we'd see away from home again?
"I'm thankful and I'm lucky that these lads want to be better and do better and they've got great camaraderie and togetherness and a great work ethic to want to do it right. I'm really pleased with where the squad is at and hopefully we'll continue to pick up clean sheets and turn these draws into wins."
On what it was like to play in such extreme conditions, midfielder Terry Taylor explained: “We knew before the game that it was going to be difficult. It was windy and wet when we arrived and it’s a difficult place to go anyway.
"It’s really tricky and you just have to be on your toes all the time because it’s unpredictable and the ball can go anywhere, but I think we dealt with it fairly well. There were a couple of moments where the ball landed in places you didn’t expect or it went a bit further than you thought so you always have to be ready to react and I think we did that well.
"Obviously we’d have liked to have won but you have to respect the point.”